Hands on with Sony's PlayStation VR headset

Tim Biggs and Ben Grubb

Virtual reality has long been touted as a way to completely immerse oneself in another world. But it's been a long time coming, and early prototypes haven't always been all that crash hot, requiring you to be tethered to a bunch of cables connected to a machine that often crashes.

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Hands on with Sony'S VR headset

Technology writers Ben Grubb and Tim Biggs give Sony's latest virtual reality headset an "immersion test" which works in tandem with a PlayStation 4 to display and control games.

But things are changing. Long confined to the showroom floors of technology conferences, now the technology seems as though it's almost ripe for the masses to experience it in their homes.

Oculus Rift — funded on Kickstarter and later acquired by Facebook for $US2 billion — was one of the first companies to revive the dream in 2012. Meanwhile, phone maker HTC has the Vive in partnership with game company Valve, and Sony has Project Morpheus, now known simply as PlayStation VR.

A Tokyo Game Show attendee tries out the PlayStation VR headset. Photo: Bloomberg

Samsung and Google have also had a go at entering the market, with the latter debuting its Cardboard and Samsung its Gear VR (powered by Oculus). Both require a user to place a smartphone inside of them to work.

All devices unveiled so far have showcased the potential of VR, but none have truly shown the full potential of VR when it comes to simple, accessible gaming. That's where Sony's PlayStation VR comes in.

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Mind-blowing? Probably not. A fun, new way to play video games? Definitely.

But will it become like 3D TV and die a slow death? Or will it thrive?

Only time will tell.

Technology journalist Tim Biggs and technology editor Ben Grubb went hands on with Sony's VR headset. They tried three demos: The Deep, London Heist Getaway, and The Kitchen.

Getting ready to use VR is a process

Tim

Given how important it is to the whole experience that the screen be sitting on your face in just the right way, it probably comes as no surprise that it isn't as simple as clipping it to your head and getting started. PlayStation VR is more comfortable than a lot of other VR headsets, but calibrating the thing is still weird, especially since you can't see what you're doing.

The screens slide forward and backward at the front so you can find a comfortable focus level, while a dial at the back tightens the straps around your head. I imagine this gets easier once you know how the device needs to be calibrated for your specific head shape, but it took me quite a while (even with help) to get it to a spot where one eye wasn't blurry or the screen wasn't off centre. Once it's sitting perfectly however, you'll pretty much forget it's there.

In terms of the actual setup of the device, you'll need a PlayStation 4 and a PlayStation Eye camera that sits on your TV, plus the VR headset and the processing unit it connects to. Sony will likely sell all this stuff in various bundles.

Ben

I wear glasses, so fitting the PlayStation VR onto my head wasn't an easy task and took much longer to do than it did for Tim. Even after sliding the screen forward and backwards to try and find the right spot, I felt it still wasn't perfect. While the focus was great at one point for both eyes, I could still see light from the real world protruding into the bottom of the headset below my eyes, ruining the illusion of being in another world. And when I tried to plug the gap by sliding the headset up against my face, things got blurry. There was no winning. For some people with glasses it might be worth removing them completely if they're long-sighted. But I'm both short- and long-sighted. Contact lenses would probably be the best solution here.

PlayStation VR can also be used with Sony's Move controllers - those glowing orbs competing with Nintendo's Wii controller that enable motion-controlled gaming. Just ensure you place the controllers somewhere you know you can find them before you put the headset on, otherwise you're going to need to take it off, find the controllers, and then begin the fitting process again.

Lights on front and back of the device track you as you walk around, but will it make you feel sick?

Tim

Once the demo started my legs turned to jelly as my brain struggled to reconcile what I was seeing — the inside of a shark cage, lurching and roiling as it descended deeper into the ocean — with the warmth and stability of the room I was in. Walking to the edge and looking down gave me vertigo and caused me to step back, even though my surroundings were clearly a video game and even though important indicators of reality — like my arms and legs — weren't visible.

At a base level, the fast head-tracking and ability to walk freely around overruled the fact that I was not actually in danger of drifting into the ocean. As with all video games, I was easily able to distinguish between reality and the software, but since my input was tied to my actual movement and head (as opposed to button presses and sticks) my body's reactions were much closer to what you would get in real life. Of course this could be just like people hiding under their seats when seeing a movie of a train coming towards them for the first time at the advent of cinema, and in time a user might become completely immune.

As a tech demo the ability to walk around and explore a virtual space was fun, but the likelihood of people walking straight into tables or through televisions makes me sceptical this kind of experience will ever arrive in our lounge rooms.

Ben

Like Tim, the first demo — known as The Deep, in which you're lowered into the ocean as a shark attacks the cage you're in — also gave me vertigo. As I approached the edge of the cage and then looked down (after a shark ripped off one of its sides), it felt as though I could actually fall off the edge. As the (virtual) shark came closer to the cage in an aggressive manner, I flinched and moved back into the cage for safety. While I didn't feel as though my life was in danger, it was a strange sensation of butterflies in my stomach and fear. I can imagine becoming desensitised to it after a while though.

While using the PlayStation VR didn't make me ill, it has apparently scared some people to the extent they've fallen back in their chairs when watching the demo of The Kitchen. Some things are going to feel a little too real, and I guess that's the whole point of VR. You're going to squirm and flinch at things just like in the real world; thank your fight-or-flight response for that.

As for this being something we use in our loungerooms, I agree with Tim on his scepticism. For now, using the PlayStation VR to physically walk around looks as though it's going to be a two-person affair. It also looks like game developers are going to have limit how they design their games due to space limitations in peoples' living rooms. While a virtual world might consist of an area that is kilometres wide, most peoples' lounge rooms are nowhere near that size. I'm yet to figure out how developers will conquer this problem. I suspect most will confine their games to small areas where "scenes" or "levels" reset often. Alternatively they'll probably just require you to sit a lot. I'm also thinking Sony might need to bring out pens to fence people into a zone so they don't break things in the real world.

It's less disorienting when both you and your avatar are sitting

Tim

Riding shotgun in a van with a British mobster, I spent some time fighting off motorcycle-riding goons with an Uzi. Pointing and shooting was incredibly intuitive, and the ability to move both hands and your head independently made for a very different shooter experience. You could, for example, lean out the side window to look behind while continuing to shoot out front.

Pulling a trigger on the Move controller gripped objects, making it possible to pick up and throw random stuff in the car or grab magazines from a bag to insert into your gun to reload. During a quiet time I grabbed a bunch of magazines and laid them out on the dashboard so I could streamline the process of reloading later on. Although I clumsily knocked a few magazines on the floor, the ease with which you could manipulate and move objects around in the virtual space with your hands was hugely impressive. I expect that, in the short term at least, most VR games will have the player seated in a car, roller coaster, mech or some other vehicle, as it makes exploring a space much easier, safer and more comfortable.

Ben

I had so much fun playing the demo of London Heist Getaway — it's a completely different way of playing a video game that got the adrenaline pumping. The two Move controllers become your left and right hands and can be used to pick things up in the car you're travelling in (in the passenger's seat of course).

Apart from throwing things at the driver, you can reload your gun with magazines and then shoot at your opponents using the gun. It felt liberating to play this game without being confined to a PlayStation controller. I could freely move my hands around (looking ridiculous to the real world). I'm hoping that other controllers come out in the future that make the game feel even more real.

So is the illusion a convincing one?

Tim

PlayStation VR is of course not the total screen envisioned by sci-fi writers decades ago, where the technology interrupts your senses and convinces you the simulation is real. Of all the headsets I've tried however, it is the one that feels most like a viable entertainment product you could have in your house. We're at the very early stages of VR, and what I'm excited for most is seeing creators suss out what works for the medium and what doesn't.

For example, I briefly played a horror demo (The Kitchen) to wrap up my time with PlayStation VR. Having a crazy ghoul woman audibly sneak around out of my sight and crawl in from behind me was very unnerving, and unexpectedly absorbing. However, at one point she stabbed me in the leg with a knife, and the fact that I felt nothing completely broke the illusion.

Ben

The light shining in from the bottom of the headset (because of my glasses) was a bit of a disappointment. But after a while I learned to ignore it. I'm really excited about virtual reality and the potential it has the offer, especially with gaming, where it's hoped it will truly shine. For now you need to wear headphones on top of the PlayStation VR headset, and wires needs to connect from the headset and headphones to a processing device that then connects to a PlayStation 4.

Once these cables disappear (if they ever can be made to disappear), then I think virtual reality headsets like the PlayStation VR will become mainstream devices. But if two people are always required (to ensure you don't trip over things or run into walls), and the person not playing is not able to enjoy the fun of the game, then devices like the PlayStation VR are going to become those gadgets that gather dust in a draw.